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by walrus01 3539 days ago
One of the reasons why the massive OVH datacenter is in its particular location in Quebec is the extremely cheap power from Quebec Hydro. At one time I checked and the large customer rate was 5.6 cents (Canadian!) per kWh. I am curious how much they are going to pay in VA and why they didn't choose to build a datacenter somewhere in OR or WA near the Columbia River hydroelectric systems instead.
5 comments
roymurdock 3539 days ago
Probably because they're aiming to provide a private government cloud and they want to be geographically closer to key clients - Fauquier county is a 20 min drive from DC and big co's in West Virginia. Also because the incentives Virginia is providing ($1.25m in cash, cuts on sales and use tax, cash for employee training) make up for a higher energy cost - especially the tax cuts.
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astrodust 3539 days ago
It's also on a major trunk which helps considerably with connectivity, and ping times from there to the east coast of the US are comparable to Chicago.

That cheap power is another reason why Québec is a big manufacturer of aluminum which is an extremely energy intensive process.

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hga 3539 days ago
Because I used to live there and know the electric company was, prior to being acquired by a bigger one, well run by engineers (a good idea if you have nukes...), I expected their power rates at (eventual) massive data-center scales to be good.

While I'm not sure I believe the "We're Great!" first thing I found with Google indicating the possibility of a rate even lower by a few tenths of a cent, it looks good ... except of course per Google the exchange rate is running 1-0.75. Still, their power should be pretty affordable, I'd more worry about tradeoffs in more expensive real estate vs. easier hiring of talent and the other advantages of being in a major telecom metro area.

And their are other advantages as noted by others in this sub-thread, and doesn't AWS have its biggest region in NoVA?

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berns 3539 days ago
An Oregon datacenter was also announced this year: http://mj.ovh.com/nl2/4tpt/xsvw.html
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sebtoast 3539 days ago
Rate seems about right. Their datacenter is located near the Beauharnois power station. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauharnois_Hydroelectric_Gene...

I also stumbled upon an article that said it was (at the time, in 2012) the largest data center in the world. That doesn't sound right.

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